County to upgrade 911 system

June 14, 2005|By BRIAN SCHROCK, Daily American Staff Writer

Last fall, Somerset County 911 Coordinator Dave Fox took a 911 call from a man who had accidentally shot himself in the foot. But before Fox could complete the call, the line went dead, leaving dispatchers with only one piece of information - the roadway along which the man lived - to track him down.

Using a computer-aided dispatch system, Fox narrowed his search to the Sipesville area, where he found a short road abutted by four or five homes. Fox dispatched police and paramedics to the area, then began calling people who lived along the tiny rural roadway, trying to find a match.

Unable to locate the caller, dispatchers turned to the Cambria County 911 Center, which sometimes receives cell phone calls from Somerset County.

With another telephone call, the dispatchers had their man - a Fayette County resident with a weak cell phone signal and the bad luck to live along a roadway with the same name as one in neighboring Somerset County.

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"He lost his signal and when he called back he got their tower," Fox explained.

Starting next year, Somerset County emergency officials hope to eliminate such problems using $1 million from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. The money will be used to implement the county's wireless 911 plan, which will provide dispatchers with more information about cell phone callers and allow them pinpoint the origin of cell phone calls to within 100 feet.

"This upgrade will help our county dispatchers track wireless callers and improve the delivery of emergency services to the public," Somerset County Commissioner James Marker said in a prepared release.

Fox said the 911 center receives nearly 40 percent of its calls from cell phones. If the caller is not familiar with the area or loses his or her signal before the call can be completed, it can cause problems for dispatchers.

"The most frequent ones are on the (Pennsylvania) Turnpike where people call in a vehicle accident and say, 'I know I'm in Somerset County, but I don't know exactly where I'm at,'" Fox said. "Those happen fairly often."

Once the new system is operational, dispatchers will automatically receive the cell phone caller's phone number and location - information that was heretofore limited to "land-line" calls. It will also allow dispatchers to track down the origin of "hang-up" telephone calls.

"Now if somebody hangs up, we have no idea if it was a prank call, somebody dialing the wrong number or someone having (medical) problems who can't speak," Fox said.

The new system will have the added benefit of allowing dispatchers to determine if several cell phone calls are coming from the same area. If they are, a dispatcher might reasonably assume that most of the calls are related to the same incident and take other 911 calls first.

"It will really benefit us time-wise and make it a lot easier for dispatchers to do their jobs rather than playing 50 questions to find out where somebody is," Fox said.

Somerset County will receive the first of three $250,000 payments in early July, the result of a $1 per month surcharge on monthly cell phone bills. Fox said the money will be used to buy new equipment and software and to reimburse the county for equipment that has already been purchased, such as the new $190,000 computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.

"When we re-did the 911 center two years ago, we knew this was coming so we made sure we got equipment that was compatible with this build-out," Marker said.

Fox said the new cell phone system should be operating by January or February.

Counties will continue to receive funding to improve wireless systems under a new law that allows a $1 per month surcharge on monthly cell phone bills. Land-line users already pay a $1.50 per month 911 charge.